


no one ever came back here to die

by kimaracretak



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Drug Use, F/F, Identity Issues, Past Relationship(s), Redemption, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, The Enchanted Forest, on memory and moving forward, reasons to keep living when you can't think of many, resurrections and second chances
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:20:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7004947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(she talks to me of love and life and faith and hope / she talks to me of death and darkened days to come): She'll stay in the castle anyway, play the good little reformed queen for Snow and her prince and stalk the halls trying to feel out her sister's presence, to wipe away the traces of her and find something new. She'll make her appearances at mealtimes, conjure the occasional feast better than anything the rest of the castle could put together in a week without magic, and if half the hall doesn't trust her enough to eat it, well, it'll be their loss and it certainly won't hurt. (She had wondered if lying to herself would be easier back in the forest. Even for something as simple as this, it isn't.)</p><p>Regina, the missing year, and the struggle to reconcile memories with the desire to keep living. </p><p>(Really, truly, please do mind the suicide warning tags, loves.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. how cold is the sun

**Author's Note:**

> title from hortus animae, "there's no sanctuary", summary quote from sirenia, "darkened days to come", chapter title from katatonia, "the longest year"
> 
> ouat's timelines and rules of magic are dumb and i'm making up my own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from katatonia, "the longest year"

The return to the Enchanted Forest, to the castle, is a homecoming for everyone except Regina. The castle had never been her home even when it had been _hers_ , and though the forest bent to her magic with curling vines and shifting trees she was far too aware that the movement stemmed from its will rather than hers.

Home had once been endless fields slipping past half-closed eyes as she buried her face in Rocinante's mane, and then it had been stolen nights in Maleficent's castle and her bed, deep and vast and warm with a promise neither of them had ultimately been able to speak or to keep.

But her home, now, was Henry.

Her home, now, was _gone._

She'll stay in the castle anyway, play the good little reformed queen for Snow and her prince and stalk the halls trying to feel out her sister's presence, to wipe away the traces of her and find something new. She'll make her appearances at mealtimes, conjure the occasional feast better than anything the rest of the castle could put together in a week without magic, and if half the hall doesn't trust her enough to eat it, well, it'll be their loss and it certainly won't hurt.

(She had wondered if lying to herself would be easier back in the forest. Even for something as simple as this, it isn't.)

 

**

 

Regina's closet aside, Zelena had left much of the castle untouched, and Regina takes over her old rooms without a word of protest from Snow and her prince. Unlike Snow she has few good memories of the castle — Leopold's death had freed her from being summoned to his bed, but the castle was still more prison than home even for the Evil Queen — and those she does are concentrated in those rooms: mastering the enchanted mirror spell for the first time, Maleficent holding her on the balcony after a night in Leopold's chambers had turned particularly vicious, Tinkerbelle tumbling into her room with some stolen treat too excited to land properly.

Memories of those moments are the only things she has to hold back the shadows that cast themselves across her walls as boldly as they ever did, and her blood runs colder at the sight of them after Neverland. Bad enough having to keep an eye on the things that made the shadows their home without having to wonder if the shadows themselves are after you.

She wakes the first morning and nearly falls off the bed in surprise, her instinctive checklist of _what time is it is Henry awake yet is it Emma's turn to pick him up after school did I remember to reschedule that meeting with the hospital board_  cut short as she opens her eyes to stone and tapestries rather than wood and linen curtains. While they had made camp the few nights before they reached the castle it was easy to remember that her life was not-Storybrooke now, the concerns of her old life buried under worries about bugs and shelter and complaints about the lack of coffee in the forest. Back in a room, back in a _bed_ , Regina feels the weight of things lost settle around her with a chill no amount of covers could ease.

She should go down for breakfast. Regina knows this, can hear the castle waking up around her despite her rooms' distance from the main areas. Years of being constantly on guard for any noise out of the ordinary in case it meant her mother or the king coming to her unannounced now doing nothing but reminding her that everyone else has a life to go back to, and she has ... what? She had done a thorough job of burning her life in this realm to the ground in the days leading up the Dark Curse, and had brought little with her from Storybrooke to make a new one from.

If she doesn't put in an appearance at breakfast, Snow will just send someone to check on her, or worse, show up herself. But at the same time, the thought of facing everyone's stares is too much to bear, especially when she's still getting used to the lack of anything resembling good coffee. Regina conjures a glass of water, sends a thin trail of her magic out in search of a loaf of bread no one will miss — for all of her skill at magic she could never quite make conjured food taste as good its real counterparts — and wonders how long she has until she has to deal with other people again.

Not long, as it turns out. Ruby comes to her door barely an hour later, the wild night-edged feeling of her magic easily distinguished through the door even a week and a half out from the full moon. Regina contemplates ignoring her knocking, but eventually decides that getting this over with, and avoiding Snow for a little while longer, is the better option.

"Any excuse to jump straight back to being Snow's little lapdog, I see," she greets Ruby, though the words lack the pure venom they once would have held.

Ruby rolls her eyes, but holds out the basket of food anyway. "Is it that unbelievable to you that some of us might actually care?" Regina's not sure whether Ruby's including herself in that 'us'. She's not sure _she_ cares.

Instead, she just says, "Yes." Takes the basket and sets it on the floor, and suddenly the space between them needs to be filled with something else, anything besides politeness-dictated food and impolite truths.

"You did save us, you know," Ruby points out. "That counts for something." Her smile is uncertain, but it screams _wolf_ , screams _hunter_ , and Regina's suddenly sure that she's being led into a trap that she can't even name. "And, sure, salvation without cell phones and with really crappy indoor plumbing might not be _great_ , but it's something."

Regina sighs. "Something that wouldn't have been necessary had I not cursed us all to Storybrooke to begin with, or realised sooner that my own son was actually Peter Pan, yes, I know."

Ruby crosses her arms and glares, upper lip curling in an uncanny imitation of her wolf. "That wasn't where I was going with that. And if you spent a little less time concerned with happy endings and a little more thinking about new beginnings, maybe you wouldn't look so much like shit."

Magic surges under Regina's skin, hot and wild, and she clenches her fists around sparks that want nothing more than to leap out and torch Ruby. She's not going to light someone on fire her first week back in the forest, she's _not_.

She's also, she's realising, rather lacking in other methods of problem solving. "Get. Out."

"Fine," Ruby snaps. "I tried. Which is more than I can say for you."

Regina takes great delight in letting her magic slam the door shut as hard as it likes as soon as Ruby's back is turned.

 

**

 

It takes Regina a week to decide that Ruby, damn the girl, has _point_. She's not used to being alone anymore, and her self-imposed isolation is beginning to remind her too much of the days when her rooms were an externally-imposed prison.

Still, though, the prospect of facing the rest of the castle in its entirety is daunting, so she compromises, changing into a more casual dress and taking a book out to her garden. She settles under the apple tree, presses her cheek against the bark and stares up through the branches to a sky that's a colour blue she never saw in Storybrooke. The tree's grown in the time she's been gone, and as she opens her spellbook she feels something like the beginning of the possibility of something other than despair start to stir in her chest.

The sun is out, early summer here being far more like an actual summer than early summer in northern Maine, and somehow, Regina manages to fall asleep. She must, because one moment she's alone, and then there's a voice saying, "So, you've managed to rejoin the land of the living," and there's a fireball in her hand before she consciously forms one, because no one should be able to appear that silently without . . .

She sighs, turns around and extinguishes the fireball as she feels the magic settle on her skin. Cherry wine and cut grass and the breeze where it shouldn't be. "Tinkerbelle."

Unlike the other fairies, Tink remains grown even now, though she hasn't bothered to retract her wings and they shine in the sunlight reflected off the sequins adoring the hem of her miniskirt and the metal toes of her boots. "Hi," she says holding out a small bowl, and Regina knows what they are before looking. Blackberries, the same kind they picked the first day they linked arms and walked beyond the castle walls.

Regina blinks slowly at her. "Why does everyone insist on bringing me food like I'm a child who hasn't learned how to feed herself _or_  her first summoning spells yet?"

"I'm supposed to believe your rather excellent imitation of one is unintentional, then?" Tink asks, disbelief shadowing every word. "I can feel your magic, you know. You've had maybe four meals all week."

"I haven't been hungry," she says icily, flipping her book open. Then again, she hasn't had the opportunity for fresh blackberries all week either. They've had maybe a month and a half together, spread out over years and realms, and somehow Tink still manages to care more about Regina than Regina cares for herself.

Tink, well aware of both Regina's dismissals and the fact that she hasn't been given one, just waits. Regina sighs. "At least you wear green better than my sister." It's not an invitation, but it's not exactly a dismissal either, and Tinkerbelle takes it for what it is, settling cross-legged next to Regina on the ground.

"And you wear corsets just as well as you wear you Madame Mayor outfits," Tink replies. Her version of a peace offering, an acknowledgment of their conflicted present and a reminder of their time as friends, somehow managing to set aside her insufferable fairy optimism to just let Regina know that she's _here_.

And, oh, maybe everyone's right to be worried that being back here will make it easier for her to slip back into being the Evil Queen because apparently all it takes is Tink next to her, Tink's voice with its sweet lilt just slightly sharper than it was in any other world, to send her back decades to when she's resting curled into her side in the garden of a hidden tavern and smiling for the first time since Daniel died.

It's _comforting,_ and Regina flinches back from it instinctively. This return is an ending even more final than the curse breaking, and it isn't happy for her. Can't be happy for her, not while she lingers in some half-redeemed state. Maybe not ever, as long as Henry's not here to believe in her.

But she can't pull away completely, not even now, not with so much history between them. So all she says is, "If you ask me if I'm okay you'll find yourself dodging fireballs for as long as we're here."

"I was a _terrible_  fairy, Regina, not a stupid one," she says, and Regina can hear the affectionate eyeroll without looking at her.

And there's a part of Regina that wants to apologise for her younger self, again, wants to say _she wasn't right, she was just scared_ , wants to say _you still saved my life and that matters too_ , wants to say _you already proved me wrong, more times than I deserved_. But Tink has fallen silent, tucking her feet up underneath her and paying studious attention to her own summoned book as she lazily runs her fingers along the edge of the bowl, and Regina thinks that maybe, just maybe, this is a sort of comfort she can allow herself for now.

It's temporary, it has to be. Because she's had three chances at happy endings now, and Cora took one and she gave up on the second without even trying and maybe her third could have been Henry, before Pan's curse, before she took away his entire life so he could stay alive; there's no more happy endings waiting for her. Because Zelena is watching, waiting, planning to take revenge on her sister for having a life that Regina would have — would she have given it to Zelena happily? Her life had led her to Henry, but it had also lost her Henry, and in the space where he no longer is all her missed chances have taken up residence and claw away at her skin from the insides, pulling away _Regina_  and _The Evil Queen_  and all her other might-have-been lives.

Somehow, in the middle of all that, there is still this moment: temporary and flickering and so much more substantial than it has any right to be but still light for all of that, and Regina's survived on moments of light like this for long enough, but something about this one in particular — the familiar weight of one of her spellbooks on blood magic that she hadn't brought with her to Storybooke, the new-but-old brush of Tink's fingers across the back of her hand when they both reach for a blackberry at the same time — that makes her want to believe this could be a _start_.

 

**

 

The thing is, Regina had always been so much more comfortable with endings, her own and those she had dealt to other people. She had made jumping look easy.

Then again, Tink had made catching her look easy, for those few fleeting weeks.

 

**

 

"Why are you _here_?" Regina finally snaps, two weeks into their new routine — because, somewhere along the way, it had become a routine: Regina sits under her tree studying book after book for a way to defeat her sister or even find out what she's planning; Tink lies on the grass next to her, drawing nonsense patterns in the air with her pixie dust or weaving elaborate flower chains. Regina suspects it's only a matter of time before Tink tries to drape one around her shoulders or fix it into her newly-long hair and she incinerates it — and possibly Tink as well — and the afternoons come to an abrupt end, but for now she ... tolerates them. Likes them, maybe, even if she's not going to say that just yet.

Tink looks up from her flower chain — and where did she manage to find crocuses so midnight-purple in this part of the forest? — but her fingers don't stop working as she asks, "Where else would I be?"

Regina frowns, closes her book and waves a hand. "You know, off with Blue and the rest of her sanctimonious little crowd of moths. Spreading hope to the masses, or whatever your job is now that you're a proper fairy again."

Tink just raises an eyebrow. "Off with ... have you _met_ Blue," she says, amusement tinging her voice, and it's not a question and that warms something in Regina that she doesn't want to think about too much.

"I see," Regina says slowly. She doesn't, not really, though she certainly understands the other woman's desire to be as far away from the Blue Fairy and her sickly sweet meddling as possible. "I just thought ... I know you weren't exactly in a hurry to join them at the convent in Storybrooke, but now that we're back here and you have your magic back ..."

Tink flings herself onto her back with a small noise of disgust, staring up at the apple flowers just beginning to blossom above them. "Yes, magic, that old thing. Sparking along my veins like it never left just because I finally met Blue's idiotic standards for belief. You'd think she'd bother to make sure it didn't taste like her magic before she gave it back if she _really_ wanted me to believe that."

Regina's spent enough time with courtiers and council members and even her own son to know a deliberately unsubtle change of subject when she's presented with one, but Tink, damn her, still knows that magical theory is the best way to get Regina's attention. "Tastes like her magic? I've always distinguished magics by their smells."

"Yes, well," Tink smirks. "You were taught by the Dark One, and your fire magic has a _very_  clear dragon influence, so of course you would."

And from there it's — not _easy_ , but it _is_ , and they move forward.

 

**

 

She has these moments and they're almost, _almost_  enough. For two months, and then Regina walks into one of the Charmings' strategy meetings with a book in one hand and a mug of tea in the other just in time to hear Snow saying, "...Emma slayed a _dragon_ , and there was only one of her, I think all of us combined can handle one witch," and mug and book alike are crashing to the floor as she teleports herself away before she's decided where she's going other than _away_ , before she can see the looks of shock everyone is giving her _._  And that's bad, careless and dangerous and a really good way to end up scattered in several pieces around the entire forest, but she doesn't _care_.

Slayed a dragon, as if that did not mean: Murdered Maleficent.

Slayed a dragon, as if that did not mean: Killed a woman who had been trapped half-asleep underground for twenty-eight years.

Slayed a dragon, as if that were something good and did not mean: Took away my only friend before I could tell her half the things I wanted to.

Regina rematerialises at the edge of Mal's burned woods, trembling violently but still in one piece (in one piece: as if that did not also mean _whole_ , as if she would ever be whole again).

Thirty years is hardly a blink for the forest, hardly longer than it had spent a ruin before the curse, but there's colours now where before there was only blistered sand and charred wood, grass and saplings on a mission to reclaim their old lands. It's so new, and so unexpected, and Mal — Mal would have loved it.

Mal, who trapped herself in the dark greys of a cursed half-sleep and still managed to take Regina's hand and walk back into daylight with her. Mal, who burned with revenge but also with _life_ , who tried so hard to give Regina both of those things and had to watch as she refused and pushed her away again and again. Mal, who was never going to see her fortress tall and proud over this new realm, because Regina had been selfish, had taken her to Storybrooke and then let her die.

Regina falls to her knees, uncaring of the stains the damp grass is going to leave on her gown, one hand anchoring her in the earth and the other scrabbling desperately for her heart. She rips it out more violently than she needs to, but the pain dulls immediately as soon as her heart's in her hand, rather than her chest. Not oblivion, not even an absence of the suffocation of overwhelming loss, but more bearable.

 _I could bury this here_ , she thinks, staring at the small withered thing. She had half-expected it to grow darker after she lost Henry, but it looks just the same as it did when Tink held it in Neverland. _I could crush this right now_. No one here to stop her, no one to find her in time. _I could stop this from hurting me ever again._

 _If I did jump, here's to good reasons,_  she had once said to a fairy who made her laugh and who might even be a friend. She can feel the echo of the wry smirk on her lips even now, one more in a long line of defence mechanisms, like if she smiled it wouldn't be a lie and she wouldn't have to consciously face the real reason the balcony railing crumbled under her fingers. Tink's own smile had been genuine though, like she understood the lie and the truth both, and for a while Regina had been able to work on undoing those reasons.

And then Tink had tried to hand her off to another man, and Regina had snapped, sent her away, welcomed all the reasons as they came flooding back because they, at least, were familiar.

She tightens her fingers around her heart, gasps as pain spirals through her. Physical pain. Pain she can _control._  This, too, she can welcome.

A bird screams above her, and Regina finally tears her gaze away from her heart. From here, if she squints against the sun and tilts her head just right, it almost looks like it could be Mal, alive and playful and free, with her revenge achieved and a lifetime still ahead of her.

She clenches her heart even tighter, hears it creak as tears well in her eyes and her vision starts to blacken. _Mal, Mal, I'm sorry, I'll see you soon, I'll see Henry when he dies too, maybe then he'll remember me._

The fall from her balcony had seemed to take an eternity, but this takes longer, more strength ebbing from her fingers the longer she squeezes. She shuts her eyes against the fading vision of the Mal's fortress, pictures the woman herself instead. _Oh, Mal, why was I so beyond listening to you when I needed to the most?_

Mal, a small voice reminds her, never would have wanted her to do something so permanent. _Listen to her now._

Regina chokes on a sob, and flings her heart as far away from her as she can.


	2. silent echoes of what's come to pass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from guilt mahcine, "season of denial"

Regina fetches her heart after she's cried as much as she'll allow herself to, cradles it in her hand until the sun starts to dip below the mountains. Then she stands up, and hesitates with it halfway back to her chest. How many times has she felt it slip over that fine line between unbearable pain and numbness? How long until Mal's voice fades away from her again and she wants to die enough to try?

It's better this way, feelings far enough away to name and analyse. She'd never been good at that, but she had never faced this sort of future, either. Never had such a hard time reconciling her memories and her desire to _have_ a future. She conjures a small bag, wraps her heart up and ties it around her waist.

_Here's to good reasons._

She'll keep the reasons a little further away, for now.

Regina teleports herself about an hour's walk from the castle, not immediately ready to face anyone else but not exactly thrilled by the idea of spending much more time alone with her thoughts. The heroes, of course, have other plans, and she's hardly walked ten minutes before Ruby, in wolf form, bounds out of the trees and settles herself across the path, daring Regina to try to walk any further.

"Really?" Regina sighs, planting her hands on her hips. "Not that I don't expect cowardice from Snow, but one day she's going to realise she has to stop sending you to do all of her dirty work for her."

Ruby growls in something Regina supposes is disagreement.

"Oh, come on, I've talked to myself enough for one day. Either be a good dog and move, or have an actual conversation with me."

The wolf cocks her head, consideration gleaming in her golden eyes. Part of Regina wants her to run away. The other part  of her is desperate for any sort of human contact, anything to help her start to sort out the ghosts in her head, and Ruby is ... well, Ruby and Tink are the closest thing to bearable in the entire realm.

"Fine, then. Run back home and tell everyone that their best hope against the Wicked Witch lives to waste away another day in endless strategy meetings."

Ruby _whines_  at that, jumps to her feet and stretches and narrows and shimmers until she's human again, standing in front of Regina with crossed arms and unreadable eyes. "You know that's not the only reason we might care."

That fight again. Regina sighs. "I really, really don't." It's not really true anymore, but lies are easier than confessions.

"Hey," Ruby says softly. She steps closer, fingers twitching like she's stopping herself from actually reaching out. "Okay, maybe that was stupid, considering what things have been like these past few months. But you looked ... you looked better, a little bit, recently, and then when you transported away this morning your magic felt like it _stopped_  for a few minutes." Concern, genuine concern clouds her face, and Regina realises all at once that this, coming to her, being _kind_  to the _evil queen_  is as hard for Ruby as accepting her concern is for Regina.

Regina bites her lip. "It was ..." Lies and more lies crowding behind her teeth, and it would be so easy to pick one of them, send Ruby away again. Ruby, who also knows what it means to become a monster and lose someone you love.

_Spend a little more time thinking about new beginnings._

_Find another hobby._

Mal had followed her back to the fire when the rest of the world had been relieved she was gone. Regina, apparently, has more people waiting for her to come with them than she had ever expected she would have. More people than she _deserves_. "I was reminded of someone I ... cared about. And lost. And I reacted ..." she hesitates, lips twisting into a wry smirk, "badly."

Concern flickers across Ruby's face, and Regina can almost _hear_ her coming up with a hundred worst-case scenarios of death an destruction. Would it even occur to her that Regina might have turned all that loss upon herself, for once? "Daniel?" Ruby asks, and for once she sounds almost ... tentative.

Regina can't help but laugh at that. If only it were so simple. Losing Daniel was tragic, unbearable even, but _understandable_ : one more in a long line of Cora's punishments. Losing Mal had taken _time._  "No, dear, I'm afraid I managed to lose her all on my own."

She watches Ruby's eyes widen, wonders where she's filing that in her list of _reasons to hate the Evil Queen versus reasons to be nice to Regina_ , steels herself against the inevitable flood of well-meaning questions and hope speeches. But all Ruby says is, "Come to dinner with me."

"What?" Regina blinks and shakes her head, sure she must have misunderstood.

"Come to dinner with me," Ruby repeats. "You look like you don't want to be alone."

She doesn't, but she's not sure she likes how easily Ruby figured that out. "Depends," she says guardedly. "Do I have to talk to the Charmings?"

"Not even to me," Ruby promises, relief smoothing out the lines around her eyes.

Regina lets her lead the way back to the castle, feels her heart bump so heavily against her hip for something shrunk so small, and hopes she isn't making another mistake.

 

**

 

Destroying Zelena may have given Regina a reason to stay awake, but that doesn't mean she has to enjoy it. Or even that she has to be all the way awake.

She mixes Mal's old drug the next day, picking the mushrooms herself ( _it's so good to see you out of the castle!_ Snow says, genuine joy saturating every word, her earlier concern at Regina's abrupt departure vanished, and she wants to hate her for it) and summoning the seawater, teeth digging into her lip as she pores over topography maps (and if she eats two and a half of Granny's meat pies chasing the energy lost from summoning over such a distance, well, the wolf looks pleased enough that she starts wondering what it would be like to have one more person in the castle who doesn't hate her).

Regina doesn't have a spindle, but that had always been Mal's trademark, and apples were hers to use against other people, so she returns to hairpins. Curling up in her bed in the soft, familiar silk pajamas she's transformed one of her gowns into, she almost feels like she could be back in Storybrooke, during one of the first years of the curse. A time when Mal was still alive, when she could visit her whenever she liked.

Pricking her finger, feeling the drug spiral languidly through her blood, _this_ is what feels like the truest homecoming. It's not the same, not without Mal, but it's _close_ and when she surrenders herself gratefully to the drug it feels almost as much of a relief as taking out her heart. Regina curls herself up as tightly as possible under her blankets, hums to herself as she feels her body slipping into true — if drug-aided — sleep, and it's almost enough, she can almost pretend it might one day be enough.

She doesn't know how long she sleeps, but it's still dark when she wakes and there's no one pounding on her door, so she can't have slept through the next day. She's tired, still, so tired and _cold_ , a physical price to the curse that never seemed to matter when she had a dragon to warm her.

The breeze from her balcony is warm, though, and she finds herself drifting outside almost without even realising it. Leaning over the railing she feels trapped, unreal, like she could fly.

"It never really goes away, does it?" Tink's voice from the shadowed balcony doors is soft, wistful even, but it startles Regina anyway and she spins, stumbling into the railing and clutching so tightly she can feel the skin pull across her knuckles.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" She can barely hear herself over the racing of her heart, even from its place in her dresser. One more reason she should have ignored Snow and left it buried in the woods. It feels too close, here.

Tink bites her lip, suddenly uncertain, but the rush of satisfaction Regina feels isn't nearly as strong as it would have been once. "I saw you, when I was out on patrol. I thought ... well, you looked like you ..." _Could use a friend_ , the old Tinkerbelle might have said, but there are too many years between them for it to be that simple now. _Were going to jump_ , the one she'd first met in Neverland probably would have said with no little glee, and while she would have been wrong then she wouldn't be entirely wrong now, and neither of them are particularly happy about it.

But Tink just stands there, lets her words hang suspended in the moonlight, and Regina can't see her face in the shadows but she can imagine with no effort that _look_ that Tink always gets, that aching need to _be there_ for Regina and _fix things_ for her, like she's holding something shaped like salvation in her hands and just can't figure out how to get Regina to hold on to it too. And, gods, she should be so far beyond saving by now but she's so _tired_.

"Oh, stop worrying, I wasn't going to jump. Not tonight." She answers the unasked question anyway. Resigned to losing her solitude for the rest of the night, she slides down to sit on one of the cushions she had taken to littering the balcony floor with. "Come on, then, you're certainly not going to listen to me if I tell you to go away again."

"Not this time," Tink agrees, but she's careful, so careful as she moves to sit next to Regina even as she complies with their unspoken pact not to talk directly about the night they met. It can't last, though, Regina can feel the currents of the few secrets still kept between them eddying up towards the surface. "You're just going to, what, sleeping curse yourself into oblivion until you disintegrate?"

"Not into oblivion," she snaps, quicker than she wants to be under the curse, and it's only when Tink's eyes narrow that she realises Tink was asking a different question, one that she's just answered without meaning to. ;"It's just a single drop of sleeping curse, mixed with seawater, toadstool. Takes the edge off." She's slipping, she can tell, Mal's drugged sing-song vowels echoing in her own. For once, she can't bring herself to care.

"Regina, are you ... drunk?"

Regina laughs. Drunk, yes, that would be the simple way of dealing with her life. Would even be halfway to socially acceptable, were she not a queen and a lady. Ladies only drank one glass of wine, and only with their dinner. Queens found other ways to amuse themselves.

"Regina?"

"No, dear," she sighs. Blinks slowly and watches the colours slip along her vision. Tink looks so much better in blue than the Ruel Ghorm ever did. Not so great in red, though. "This is something a ... dear friend once showed me." _Dear friend,_  of course, hardly even began to describe what she and Mal had been to each other, but for all she's thought about Mal the past two days she can't actually _say_ any of it.

Tink reaches out, curls her long fingers around Regina's wrist. She's warm, and Regina tells herself that's why her only protest is a halfhearted shake of her hand to encourage Tink to let go, why she doesn't say anything when Tink holds on just a bit tighter and breathes _oh, Regina_ , so softly that she thinks this might be the one thing that breaks her.

She shuts her eyes. Tink doesn't leave, doesn't move, and if it weren't for the faint sense of _not real not me_ slipping through her veins it could be any other day under the apple tree.

"There were these cliffs, on Pan's island," Tink starts, so unexpectedly that Regina opens her eyes. She's soft and blurry around the edges, won't come back no matter how hard Regina blinks. Maybe it's not because of the drug after all. Maybe this is just what they're left with, now, cursed to stay in a land that stopped being theirs decades ago when they banished themselves.

Tink fiddles with the hem of her skirt, clearly wanting to say more but unsure how Regina would react. Any other time Regina would have interrupted her, used any of a hundred phrases that she _knows_  will send Tink away again, this time maybe even for good. But she doesn't, fights against every single one of her instincts and stays silent while Tink puts her thoughts in order.

"I spent a lot of time there, after I was first banished." She doesn't — can't? — meet Regina's eyes. Something is shifting between them, something neither of them are quite ready to catch hold of and acknowledge and name. "Standing on the very edge, watching the sea. Listening. You never saw the sea there like that, and I'm glad, because it was ... _hungry_ , like parts of the forest are."

Regina thinks about vines tearing her from Rocinante's back under her mother's direction, about trees that would walk reluctantly wherever she pointed them. About Tinkerbelle standing at the edge of a cliff as the waves rose higher and higher and higher. She shivers, reaches out and laces her fingers through Tink's. Still doesn't meet her eyes.

"I would think, you know, maybe if I jumped from high enough, if I had enough time to fall, maybe my magic would come back. I — I knew it wouldn't, of course, belief fuels our magic but something has to be _there_ for it to work with, and that's what Blue took from me. But it — it was a good reason to jump. And ... I wanted to."

_Here's to good reasons._

Staying silent as Tink decides how much else she wants to say is one of the hardest things Regina has ever done. She wants to ask _why_ , _was I really that awful to you, why are you still here_ , but she doesn't. She's stolen so many stories, rewritten so many more, and this one is Tink's, is her gift or maybe her apology but mostly it's _new_ and it makes Regina want something that she can't name even as it burns away at the edges of her loss.

"I never did, but that want — _unlearning_ that — it was the hardest thing I have ever had to live with." And now she does look up, moonlight reflecting off the tears in her eyes, and she looks as fragile as Regina feels, like the only thing holding either of them together is the weight of their history as it twines around them. "I missed you for so long before I hated you," she whispers as her tears start to fall, and Regina doesn't have any tears left now but she surrenders to the flood surging, _breaking_ between them, pulls Tink fully into her arms and buries her face in her curls and lets her friend's tears soak into her nightgown. She doesn't feel like the Queen now, doesn't feel like Regina, doesn't feel anything but brokenly, incongruously, _safe_.

Maybe getting lost like this was just a different way to die.

Maybe it was a _better_ one.


	3. falling deeper into the unknown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a tiny interlude in which regina finally gets cuddles and kisses
> 
> this is not where i originally intended to end this chapter, but given this weekend i don't have the heart for finishing + editing the emotional roller coaster that this was planned to be
> 
> chapter title from stream of passion, 'this moment'

Regina awakens again to a daylight that burns her eyes after the fog of the sleeping curse. She reaches up instinctively to block out the light, but her arm won't move. Blinking away her rising panic, she looks down to see Tinkerbelle still curled into her side, headband knocked askew and golden curls tumbling down her shoulders and across Regina's arm.

A week ago, a day ago, Regina would have pushed her away, but here in this hazy half-awake that still seems only _almost_  real, it feels ... comforting, an uncanny mirror of a time decades ago when Regina would wake wrapped in Tink's arms and try to hold on to the dream that they would fly away together. It feels a little less precarious now, though, and yet all that seems to mean is that Regina has less idea how to deal with it.

So she stays still and quiet, gazing down at the woman sleeping in her arms, and tries not to think about how in a world where Henry was also in the Enchanted Forest, a world where she could be sure Tink wouldn't flee as soon as she opened her eyes, she might even call herself _lucky_  for being able to wake up like this. Gods, she could have had this years ago, if only she'd been brave.

Tink stirs in her arms, and Regina bites her lip. One more moment, she thinks. One more moment like this, and if she doesn't move, barely breathes, then maybe ...

"Good morning," Tink says, voice rough with sleep, and Regina gasps. How long has she been awake?

"Sorry," she says breathlessly, trying to figure out the best way to untangle their limbs. "Sorry, I didn't mean ..." She can feel her cheeks burning.

Tink makes a small noise of disapproval, reaching up to press a finger against Regina's lips. "No. Five more minutes?"

She never had been much of a morning person, but Regina still tenses under her touch, still tired and raw from their conversation last night. She's spent so long trying not to think about how much she'd missed this, how much she still wants it — has wanted it since the moment Tink handed her back her heart.

"You can leave, you know," Regina says quietly, when well more than five minutes have passed and Tink shows no sign of moving. If she leaves now, while Regina has this memory but before she has a chance to start getting used to this warmth, they can go back to ... well, nothing is _normal_ for them anymore.

"Hm? Why?" Tink asks, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks as she tilts her head to look up at Regina with sleepy confusion.

"Because ..." _Because you're going to leave anyway. Because we were too open last night and you're only thinking of this as an obligation. Because ... because I'm crazy and fucked up and it means everyone leaves and I can't do that again, can't lose you or anyone else again._

Silly, to think she would ever be able to say any of that. Tink doesn't press her, just snuggles closer until she's practically in Regina's lap, the heat of her bare skin seeping through the thin silk of Regina's robe. Every fibre of her body is screaming at her to get up, collect herself, go to the library or the stables or somewhere, anywhere where she could forget how stupid she was to be vulnerable. Instead, she leans down and presses her cheek to the top of Tink's head.

_Leave now_ , she thinks, trying to memorise every sensation as if it's the last time she'll ever feel it. _Leave while I can still come back from another loss._

"Regina," Tink murmurs into the crook of her neck, and Regina shivers under the brush of her lips. "I get it if you want to be alone this morning. But I'm not leaving again. Not like last time."

Regina can feel her heart twist from across the room. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

"It's not a promise," Tink says, pulling back enough to re-settle herself so she's straddling Regina's legs, but carefully, so carefully, as if she's prepared for Regina to push her off. "It's a fact."

Tink is tracing nonsense patterns on the back of her hands now, sending little coloured sparks of magical heat skittering across her skin. It reminds her of Mal, and the games they used to play with the dragon's fire. It reminds her of the few bright, early days, lying in the fragrant summer grass twisting sunbeams in the wind and laughing like the children they never got to be. It makes her want — _want_ —

Abruptly, Regina jerks her hands back, steels herself against the hurt in Tink's eyes. The loss of her touch burns cold, and she's frightened by how much she wants to reach out again. Hold her again. Kiss her again, like there's still a lifetime and a happy ending ahead of them. Instead she retreats, again, summoning as much of the Queen's authority as she can when she asks, "Why are you still here?"

She's asked the same question nearly every time she's found herself alone with Tink since they returned to the forest, but this time, when Tink gives her a small, sad smile and says _because I want to be here_ , it feels closer to a truth than any of her other answers.

"Why, though?" She's not sure she wants to know the answer, not sure why she has to keep pressing, has to _know_ , but after their conversation last night the time for things unspoken is past. Knowing has to be better than wondering, doesn't it?

"Ruel Ghorm took my wings and my magic and banished me to Neverland for caring about you once. And I was so unbelievably angry at you, at her, at _myself_ for it, but then you handed me your heart and ... I realised I would do it again in a second."

"You would...?"

"Choose to help you, again." Tink reaches out, gathers Regina's hands between her own again and the wanting surges up inside her, hot and terrifying and sweet and _impossible_. "Choose to try to make you happy. You were right, you know, I was a terrible fairy. I broke half the rules we had by caring about you, and the rest _because_  I cared."

Regina reaches up a shaking hand to cup her cheek. _Love is weakness_ , Cora had said, and the lesson trying to fight that had taught her was _love is sacrifice_ , but this ... Regina won't call it love, but it feels like the start of something _new._

They can never go back to what they were, Regina's not even sure she would want to if given the choice. But now ... Tink is so still against her, pressing just slightly into her hand, lips just barely parted and it's been _so_  long since she's felt anything like this.

It's not bravery, she tells herself as she pulls Tink down to rest their foreheads together, lips centimetres apart, it's stupidity, but right now, she doesn't care. There are worse things she could be embracing, after all.

"Tell me if ..." she starts, biting her lip, and part of her _still_  expects Tink to suddenly realise what she's doing and leave, shrink down and fly away stammering apologies.

"Yes," she whispers instead. "Regina, I'm telling you _yes_." And then Tink is kissing her, and years are gone in a heartbeat, because Tink is still soft and sweet, still tastes like roses and spices, and as she runs the tip of her tongue across Regina's lips, Regina closes her eyes against the tears that rise unbidden.

She slips her hand from Tink's cheek to slide through her hair, frees the other to wrap around Tink's waist and pull her closer, her mouth so warm and insistent and familiar and still so incongruously safe that it doesn't even occur to her to protest when Tink wraps her arms loosely around her neck, preferring to stay lost in the kiss.

"You're really sure," Regina says in disbelief when Tink's mouth finally releases hers. She hadn't expected this, had hardly even dared to _hope_ , not even during the darkest nights of the curse in Storybrooke.

"Really sure," Tink confirms, running her thumbs across Regina's cheekbones. "I missed you. I care about you. I want you to be happy, Regina, and I know I'm not your soulmate, but ..."

Regina silences her with another kiss, trying not to think about why the mention of her soulmate chills her. "I don't care," she says breathlessly. "Right now I just want this. Want _you_."

"You have me," Tink says, and kisses her again, and again, and this _does_  feel like a promise, and Regina _wants_ —

_Spend a little more time thinking about new beginnings._

She tightens her arms around Tink as she moans into the kiss, and decides that she's going to hold on to this beginning as hard as she can for as long as it lasts.


End file.
